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Net Censorship Most of us have used it Most of us find it useful Some of us find it entertaining Some of us find it offensive It is the Internet The Internet has dramatically changed our society It brings together people and their ideas from all around the world in a short amount of time It is expanding daily to allow new ideas and thoughts to be transmitted quickly and easily with the single click of a button One can find information on almost any subject there Yet many people are trying to censor it The Internet contains racist thoughts sexually explicit material and much more inappropriate material But who is it inappropriate for and why should it be censored In 1996 the Communications Decency Amendment was passed by congress This amendment imposed a 100000 fine or a 2-year jail term on anyone who used the Internet to annoy abuse threaten or harass anyone else Pro-censors believed the act to be necessary in order to extend the standards of decency to the new telecommunications device Anti-censors thought the amendment was acting like the thought police Recently though the Supreme Court overturned the Communications Decency Act in the civil case of Reno v ACLU This new law states that the Internet deserves the same level of speech protection as books or other printed material Even with this new law in effect many people are still trying and some are succeeding at censoring the Internet They are creating schemes to block and rate the net A meeting recently took place at the White House about this subject Several industry leaders and the government agreed to try to originate a variety of systems to block and regulate controversial online speech Despite the Supreme Court these leaders are inching toward the dangerous and incorrect understanding that the Internet is like television and should be rated andor censored During this meeting many announcements took place Netscape a major

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